{"id":71,"date":"2009-02-01T22:23:23","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T03:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=71"},"modified":"2009-03-16T14:23:49","modified_gmt":"2009-03-16T19:23:49","slug":"signifiers-oedipaoedipus-and-postmodernism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"Signifiers, Oedipa\/Oedipus, and Postmodernism…"},"content":{"rendered":"

When reading The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>, I thought about what someone said in class in reference to signifiers in Foer\u2019s story. The thing with signifiers, according to Ferdinand de Saussure, is that they\u2019re arbitrary, at least, as far as its connection to the signified. So, Oedipa Maas is seemingly lost in this world of detached signifiers, struggling with clues and trying to seek meaning in symbols like the muted horn, or meaning in words like W.A.S.T.E. and the Trystero. She even says at one point, \u201cEach clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity,\u201d as if she recognizes that the signifiers should have a signified. I\u2019m not sure if this is a postmodern thing, insofar as having these detached signifiers; it was just a connection I made to the readings from last week.<\/p>\n

I also thought about the names Pynchon picked for people and places in this novel, but considering the thing with the detached signifiers, I\u2019m now wondering if he arbitrarily chose these names. Of course, when one see Oedipa<\/em> written on the page, one thinks Oedipus<\/em>. The only connection I can think of now, between Oedipa and Oedipus, is the blindness. This comes later in the book, when Oedipa is drinking bourbon and then \u201cwent out and drove on the freeway for a while with her lights out.\u201d For those not familiar with Oedipus Rex, he blinds himself and says something like, \u201cFrom now on, go in darkness!\u201d So, maybe this is what Pynchon was thinking when naming her Oedipa (and maybe there\u2019s more to it than the blindness), or maybe he was just \u201carbitrarily\u201d naming her. If he did arbitrarily name everyone, you still have to wonder about the names. I mean: Mucho Maas (I think that means \u201ca lot more\u201d in Spanish), Dr. Hilarious, etc. These seem so telling. But maybe that\u2019s just postmodernism: messing with what seems to be there, on the surface, or what should be there, according to what one expects. Or maybe I\u2019m just making an unrelated mess out of all of this.<\/p>\n

If put on the spot about why The Crying of Lot 49<\/em> is postmodern, I\u2019d probably say that it\u2019s because you can\u2019t figure it out, at least, not right away and not in one way. This explanation would hardly win me an A in this class, but it seems like a right explanation for this text. If written in a modern manner, it would leave nothing unexplained at the end and would have an apt conclusion\u2014maybe not a satisfying conclusion, but a plausible one. All the little threads would form some sort of picture, and the reader wouldn\u2019t be left hanging. But postmodernism seems to always have the reader questioning if what he\/she read indeed happened or if what was presented as reality wasn\u2019t actually reality at all.<\/p>\n

\"muted-horn\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When reading The Crying of Lot 49, I thought about what someone said in class in reference to signifiers in Foer\u2019s story. The thing with signifiers, according to Ferdinand de Saussure, is that they\u2019re arbitrary, at least, as far as its connection to the signified. So, Oedipa Maas is seemingly lost in this world of … Continue reading Signifiers, Oedipa\/Oedipus, and Postmodernism…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[120,35,30,29],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pynchon","tag-pynchon","tag-reality","tag-signified","tag-signifier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}